


The Bardo

by greygerbil



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post Canon - 2019, vampire road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-21 00:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17632673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Jonathan and his three partners have just died, as far as the world is concerned, and are on their way to a new life in an old country.





	The Bardo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> I saw you were open to the big Maker+progeny foursome, so I wrote you a little snippet as a treat! I hope you have fun with it.

All the luggage they hadn’t sent ahead to England was packed tight as sardines in a can in the back of the car. Jonathan and Edgar were responsible for most of it, as they always had been. Even as overstuffed folders of papers made way for first bulky, then ever-slimmer laptops, and ingredients which had once been hard to find and therefore difficult to give up became easy to synthesise and purchase once more after they’d moved locations, the two of them dragged around a plethora of oddities and objects of scientific interest, which had only ever grown in number over the course of a century. Geoffrey had grumbled about it as he always did, and then helped Jonathan stack them into the car as he always would. Geoffrey had only a bag of shirts and jeans and underwear and another stuffed with weapons, which he was going to smuggle through customs via a friend his Seattle off-shoot of the Guard of Priwen had made, some Mob type. There were also a few old documents taken out of the London Guard of Priwen’s library, old yellowed pages stuffed in bright plastic folders Geoffrey had stolen from Jonathan and Edgar after they had insisted on digitalising the texts for future reference. That was it for his earthly possessions. Sean, for his part, owned nothing but some clothes and a bible. Last time they’d moved, there used to be his books, cheap paperbacks with adventure stories, but Edgar had given him an e-book reader some years ago, realising, sly as he was, that making Sean a present was the best way to get him to look at the new technology he claimed he didn’t need, as he’d feel bad if he didn’t use a gift.

They had waited for winter to move so the nights would be long. Jonathan had marked on a map all the hotels they could stop and spend the day resting, mostly out of habit; the last time they had made this journey, Google Maps hadn’t existed. After their first move to Vancouver in 1938 and their skip to Mexico City in the early eighties, they had tarried in Seattle until this year, 2019, and were now moving back across the sea to England, as they were again close to the point where their perpetual youth and longevity became a bit too obvious. The ferry would leave from New York. Sunlight was easier to avoid there than on a plane. The final goal was Birmingham.

Jonathan would not have minded doing his research in a more secluded place, but Edgar needed the pulse of a big city, and Geoffrey wanted to be where the monsters he hunted would gather, which was naturally where the largest amount of prey congregated. Sean, too, could not be without people; wherever he ended up, he would find those who needed help. In the end, Jonathan did not mind the extra precautions that life among so many humans forced on them as long as his men were with him.

“Would you switch with me in a bit, Jonathan?”

Jonathan lifted his head. He had been staring out into the dark night at a long, empty stretch of road. He’d gotten used to it here, in the New World, these places that reached from horizon to horizon, depopulated, empty of even anything but the barest suggestion of a landscape, just flat earth drawing on and on. It still got dark out here, true dark, as it had in his childhood. The cities were never dark now. You could barely see the moon for the neon lights on every house. As he looked over at Edgar now, framed by an endless stretch of cold black desert, he smiled.

“You want to finish that paper, don’t you?” Jonathan asked.

Edgar chuckled. “Guilty as charged. This research presents such an opportunity! If robot-assisted surgery progresses further, even the two of us will be able to get back to an operating table.” He shook his head. “I know I will be teaching for now, but I am really looking forward to working in a hospital again. Perhaps in a few decades. Or I could look for a research group? But I suppose it could be a bit obvious if I ran into a colleague during a conference. The world is so connected these days. I could shift into a different field of studies, maybe. Cancer research is in such a critical spot these days…”

If Jonathan had ever met a man who belied the theory that all immortals grew morose and disillusioned with the world eventually, it was Edgar. This was lucky for him, of course, being a doctor, too, and someone with a darker disposition. Whenever the years grew too long for him, he could easily be swept up in Edgar’s enthusiasm for their shared profession – even if, at times, Jonathan had to remind Edgar not to let his joy carry him too far off the tracks, as it had once already, now more than a century ago.

To be less obvious to the world outside, Edgar and Jonathan had decided that they would alternate between their roles as researchers, teachers, and practicing physicians. Up until last week, Edgar had worked in a laboratory at a private firm, exploring experimental treatments for sickle cell disease, whereas Jonathan had been a general practitioner in a small clinic in Bitter Lake.

“Send it to me. I’ll read it later,” he said. “We can discuss it on the boat.”

“Is this punishment for us? We’re sharing a cabin with you two,” Geoffrey said from behind them, raising a brow.

“One of these days, we’re making a scholar out of you yet,” Jonathan answered and grinned. “And if it takes another three hundred years.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll be praying with Sean before that happens.”

Geoffrey glanced over at Sean and Jonathan followed his gaze, but Sean didn’t react. He was wrapped up in an oversized hoodie, hood pulled down into his face. Sean’s clothes always seemed at least ten, fifteen years behind the times, but that fit a kindly, pious caretaker of the sick and poor, who surely even as a human wouldn’t have time or inclination to chase trends. When he updated his wardrobe, it was usually because the teenagers at whatever shelter or community place he was running had badgered him about it enough. Geoffrey, in contrast, hadn’t stopped looking like a cowboy since the forties, in his rough brown leather jacket and washed-out jeans, but since he found a beat-up motorcycle and assembled a new gang wherever he ended up, that worked out for his image, too. Edgar and Jonathan had to look presentable, being in higher-paying jobs, though Jonathan figured Edgar quite enjoyed the dress-up for its own sake.

“Sean?” Jonathan asked.

Sean, who had balled his hand in his sleeve, quickly lifted his fabric-covered fist to his face and surreptitiously dragged it across his cheeks before he turned his head out of the shadow of his hood.

“Yes?” he asked, clearing his throat when his voice came out a bit too thick.

“They’ll be fine. I’m sure Charlene is not going to let the roof fall down on them.”

“No, of course not.”

Jonathan understood, obviously. He had left behind friends as well, they all had. So far, they had always at least been lucky enough not to be discovered, though, never had to flee their home under pressure. Geoffrey could train another leader in his place, Sean raised up one of his helpers to keep an eye on his flock, Jonathan and Edgar finished up their affairs as much as seemed realistic without making it look like they had prepared for their disappearance. This time, Geoffrey had drowned while two of his followers looked on, and crawled back out of the Duwamish River two miles downstream. Sean had had a closed-casket funeral because a car crash had supposedly mutilated him too much to show the remains to his grieving flock. Jonathan and Edgar had simply had news of their demise relayed through the employees of a friend, an Ekon who had stuck it out in Seattle for the last 120 years and built up a veritable spiderweb of connections across the city.

“Come over here,” Geoffrey commanded, and Sean hesitated only briefly before he followed the coarse invitation, slipping off his seat belt to switch seats, tiredly leaning into Geoffrey’s side as Geoffrey wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“Now, now, Sean,” Edgar said. “I know it hurts, but there’s people in Birmingham who need help, too. Wouldn’t it be quite unfair to keep your angelic presence all to this side of the ocean forever?”

“I’m really not an angel,” Sean muttered.

“An immortal servant of the lord dedicated to the protection of humanity… it sounds pretty close to me,” Edgar countered, and though he was joking, his voice was soft.

“Isn’t that what they called you back in Vancouver?” Geoffrey asked, looking out over the desert. “The Angel of Downtown Eastside?”

“That was almost worse than saint for blasphemy…”

Geoffrey snorted.

“It’s better than Pale Rider, at least.”

“That was your own fault,” Edgar pointed out. “Where did you find that weird white motorcycle?”

Jonathan snorted quietly. Geoffrey had only had that thing for a year or so, until he’d found something more suitable, but by then the nickname had stuck for the those men and women of Seattle who he had collected around him with his feats of daring against the rabid Skal population in the city, and he’d kept it all over the years up until now.

Reaching back, Jonathan, touched Sean’s knee and Geoffrey’s hand resting on it, locking gazes with Sean. The yellow of his iris shone like gold when his eyes were red from crying. Finding himself under such surveillance, Sean gave his best to force a smile.

“What papers did you get for us?” he asked quietly.

To get new names, new lives was a formality by now. They were well-acquainted with several other Ekons who all more or less had the same problems as them when it came to these matters, and Jonathan had acquired the English passports in exchange for a small favour. The other three had left the choice of identities to him; Geoffrey and Sean had never much cared what they were called, and Edgar had asked Jonathan to surprise him this time.

Sean never much liked to cause upset and make the others fuss over him, so the question was likely a diversion, but Jonathan decided that perhaps he could distract him with the answer, anyway. Sitting up, he reached into the black briefcase between his legs. Edgar took his eyes briefly off the empty road as he watched with curiosity.

“Well, now that it is a possibility, I figured it would be fine to show a little bit of our relationship to the world. As much as possible.” He glanced briefly into the passports and then stacked them, two on his right knee, two on his left. Lifting the right ones, he handed them to Geoffrey over his shoulder. “The first one is yours.”

“Ronan Kingsley, né McLoughlin...” Geoffrey paused as he realised what he was reading and opened the other passport before he let out a barking laugh. “Why did I have to take Edgar’s name? I’d say it’d be the other way around!”

Edgar, who seemed to have guessed what Geoffrey was seeing, threw Jonathan a delighted grin.

“Now this is a great idea! Except, of course, in a situation where I’d have to introduce this particular husband to anyone,” he said, glancing up at Geoffrey in the rear view mirror. “I’m teaching at a university this time around, do you know? I got an offer from a fellow member of the Brotherhood of the Stole. I’m not having you along for any functions if you won’t take off that leather jacket, Mr. Kingsley.”

“You’ll have to think of a good explanation why you were robbing the cradle first, or they’ll question your own manners before mine, old man,” Geoffrey answered with a smirk.

Edgar had died at fifty-one, which put him at fifteen years Geoffrey’s senior, a distance that had been irrelevant then and, after all this time, seemed laughably small.

“Oh, I’m sure colouring my hair will take some years off.” His hair was its natural grey now, but that was because he’d pretended to have aged. “Maybe a reddish blond this time.”

“No, I like dark hair,” Geoffrey demanded.

With an exaggerated sigh, Edgar shrugged his shoulders. “I might consider it for my husband.”

Peering at the passports over Geoffrey’s arm seemed to have put a little life back into Sean. “What are our names?” he asked Jonathan.

“Here you go, David. I hope you have no trouble taking my name.”

Jonathan handed him the passports for David Mercer, born Bell, and Christopher Mercer, his own new name.

“I’d be honoured.”

Sean flipped through the papers before he gently took the other two passports out of Geoffrey’s hands, looking at them as if he was memorising the sparse information, before he enveloped them tightly in his hands. His eyes were still glassy, but he seemed a little calmer to Jonathan.

“For the next time, we swap husbands, then?” Edgar asked Jonathan, amused.

“If you and Geoffrey can make it through your marriage without divorce, otherwise we might have to shuffle sooner...”

-

Half an hour later, Jonathan relieved Edgar from driving duty, kissing him as they passed each other before the hood of the car, and waited for Edgar to go to the back to whisper something in his new husband’s ear that made Geoffrey show him his fangs as he grinned. Edgar huffed a laugh as he slapped the door shut on him, but not before he hadn’t reached out to gently cup Sean’s cheek in a wordless act of comfort.

They were driving through the periphery of some city edging gray onto the screen of the GPS, cubes of concrete and steel lit up in stark white passing them by alongside nondescript fast food restaurants and chain gas stations. Next to him, Edgar was totally engrossed in the text on his tablet, caught up in yet another glorious image of the future. Sean had dragged his legs up on the empty seat and gone to sleep with his head in Geoffrey’s lap, Geoffrey’s hand rested gently over his eyes, protecting them from the bright beams of neon light that would blink momentarily into the car before vanishing into the distance. The passports were still gathered in Sean’s loose grip. Geoffrey caught Jonathan’s gaze as he looked at them.

“I can drive if you want, let you get some rest, too.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Their new lives were rushing towards them already, but for now, the road was endless and they were dead to the world and only for each other in this car. Jonathan wanted to enjoy it for a bit.


End file.
